Regulation

I’m a hunter. A lot of folks are. I don’t get a lot of opportunity to hunt, however, so I struggle to meet my own needs with deer meat. But there are a lot of hunters who are far more fortunate donated their extra meet to feed poor folks in Louisiana, and they just got a slap across the face for their troubles:

The Dept. of Health and Hospitals ordered the staff at the Shreveport-Bossier Rescue Mission to throw 1,600 pounds of donated venison in garbage bins – and then ordered then to douse the meat with Clorox – so other animals would not eat the meat.

“Deer meat is not permitted to be served in a shelter, restaurant or any other public eating establishment in Louisiana,” said a Health Dept. official in an email to Fox News. “While we applaud the good intentions of the hunters who donated this meat, we must protect the people who eat at the Rescue Mission, and we cannot allow a potentially serious health threat to endanger the public.”

The meat came via a group called “Hunters for the Hungry.” This group enables hunters to donate entire deer to help feed poor people by dropping off whole deer at participating processors. In short, the meat is controlled from that point on.

Louisiana doesn’t have any laws against doing something like this. However, 1,600 pounds of the meat was destroyed. Hunters for the Hungry wasn’t even allowed to take the meat back and give it to others who are in need.

As for the safety, not only is the meat controlled, but venison is one of the leanest forms of meat you can find. In short, it’s hard to beat it from a health perspective. It is as safe as you’re going to find.

Much hash has been made lately over Grover Norquist’s Taxpayer Protection Pledge, from his organization, Americans for Tax Reform. The Pledge forces anyone who signs it to not vote for tax increases, unless there is reduction in taxes elsewhere (for instance, voting to raise excise taxes but cutting income taxes, though don’t quote me on that.) It’s also been in the news because some Republicans have backed away from the pledge, not wanting to be feel like they’re in a straight jacket while engaged in fiscal cliff negotiations.

For years, Grover Norquist and Republicans have tried “starving the beast” of the federal government by capping taxes. While they’ve been highly successful at preventing tax increases, they have been less effective at addressing one problematic aspect of fiscal policy: the ability of the Federal Reserve and Treasury to borrow more and more to finance massive spending, as they have done under the Bush and Obama administrations. It’s simple: Borrowing today means a higher tax burden tomorrow when the debt comes due. True fiscal responsibility, then, requires us to curb spending in addition to limiting tax rates.

Back in August, John Schnatter, founder and CEO of Papa John’s, noted that his company would have to raise prices in order to cover the cost of ObamaCare and have to scale back hours for workers. This is pretty basic economics. When a expenses rise, either for the cost of raw materials or employing workers, a business will be forced to pass the buck on the consumer or reduce costs elsewhere.

Papa John’s isn’t alone. Last month, Darden Restaurants, which owns Olive Garden, Longhorn, and Red Lobster, announced that it would move hourly workers to part-time schedules because of mandates in ObamaCare requiring businesses to offer health insurance coverage to employees working over 30 hours a week. A Florida-based restaurant owner has said that he’ll add a 5% surcharge to customers to makeup the cost of the mandates from ObamaCare.

Schnatter’s comment, while entirely understandable from a business perspective, stirred controversy on the Left, as activists called for a boycott of Papa John’s. This has caused opponents of ObamaCare to organize “National Papa John’s Appreciation Day” which is being organized by Reboot USA.

Written by Simon Lester, Trade Policy Analyst for the Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute. Posted with permission from Cato @ Liberty.

Borrowing the title from a Stephen Colbert segment, this blog post is going to be about trade disputes not involving America. Given recent trade rhetoric, you might think that all trade disputes are about the U.S. and China, but that’s not the case. Other countries have disputes, too, and some of them are very interesting, getting into the core issue of what international trade rules should be about.

First up is a complaint by Canada and Norway against the EU related to a ban on “seal products.” According to the EU regulation at issue, seal products means “all products, either processed or unprocessed, deriving or obtained from seals, including meat, oil, blubber, organs, raw fur skins and fur skins, tanned or dressed, including fur skins assembled in plates, crosses and similar forms, and articles made from fur skins.” Under the regulation, with limited exceptions, seal products may not be imported or sold in the EU.

If these reasons weren’t enough to do away with the law and start over, a new compendium put together by Dean Clancy, Vice President of Health Care Policy at FreedomWorks, goes over the top 10 reasons to repeal ObamaCare.

In addition to some of the points already made, Clancy explains that ObamaCare is a bureaucratic mess that will force many Americans to lose their current health insurance, pushing them into buy government-controlled plans. He explains that taxes imposed as part of the law will hit all areas of the health care system. Clancy also notes that the law will lead to rationing of health care.

More importantly, as Clancy explains, “there is a better way.” After repealing ObamaCare, Congress could start over again by crafting legislation that focuses on the needs of patients, not bureaucrats.

Written by Michael F. Cannon, Director of Health Policy Studies at the Cato Institute. Posted with permission from Cato @ Liberty.

ObamaCare directs the Secretary of Health and Human Services to define the “essential health benefits” that all consumers in the individual and small-group health insurance markets must purchase. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius kicked that decision to the states, giving them a deadline of this past Friday, September 30. Kaiser Health News reports that all of 16 states submitted an Essential Health Benefits (EHB) benchmark to HHS by the deadline.

But did Sebelius have the authority to kick this decision to states? In a September 26 letter to Sebelius, Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner Michael Consedine writes:

[T]he PPACA clearly states that the Secretary of HHS is to define the EHB package for policies offered both inside and outside of health insurance exchanges. While the language in PPACA was plain that this statutory responsibility fell on HHS, in December of last year HHS issued guidance preliminarily indicating states must select a benchmark design, with HHS potentially acting as final arbiter…of that selection. (Emphasis added.)

Is September 30 even a deadline?

Some communications from your agency indicate that this is a suggested response date while others indicate that it is a deadline of some sort. We again are asking for clarity.

Keep telling me that the economy is getting better. Seriously, I know this something that is critical to President Barack Obama re-election bid — that businesses are hiring more and that there are all these encouraging mythical signs everywhere. Yeah, doesn’t seem to be the case according to a new report from Bloomberg, which notes that business activity has declined for the first time since 2009:

Business activity in the U.S. unexpectedly contracted in September for the first time in three years, adding to signs manufacturing will contribute less to the economic recovery.

The Institute for Supply Management-Chicago Inc. said today its business barometer fell 49.7 this month from 53 in August. A reading of 50 is the dividing line between expansion and contraction.

Uncertainties surrounding domestic fiscal policy and weakening economies in Europe and China may prevent companies from adding to headcount and ramping up production. Slow growth prospects prompted the Federal Reserve to announce more accommodation measures earlier this month in a bid to help spur the three-year-old expansion.

“The chain that links all this stuff together is just a loss of confidence as we head toward the end of the year in fiscal policy,” said Ward McCarthy, chief financial economist at Jefferies & Co. Inc. in New York, whose forecast of 50 was the closest in the Bloomberg survey. Businesses “have been cutting back on their investment spending.”

The Cato Institute, in partnership with the Fraser Institute in Canada, has released the annual report, Economic Freedom of the World. The report shows where each nation across the globe ranks on various economic factors, such as the size of government, the legal system, respect for private property rights, sound money, free trade, and regulation.

Here is a brief summary of the report from Cato:

Global economic freedom bounced back slightly in this year’s report. After falling for two consecutive years following a long trend of increases, the average score rose from 6.79 in 2009 to 6.83 in 2010, the most recent year for which data is available. In this year’s index, Hong Kong retains the highest rating for economic freedom, 8.90 out of 10 (down slightly from 9.01 last year). The rest of this year’s top scores are Singapore, 8.69; New Zealand, 8.36; Switzerland, 8.24; Australia, 7.97; Canada, 7.97; Bahrain, 7.94; Mauritius, 7.90. Finland, 7.88; and Chile, 7.84. Bahrain and Finland are new to the top 10 — replacing, notably, the United Kingdom (fell to 12th) and the United States (a sizable drop to 18th).

The United States, long considered the standard bearer for economic freedom among large industrial nations, has experienced a substantial decline in economic freedom during the past decade. From 1980 to 2000, the United States was generally rated the third freest economy in the world, ranking behind only Hong Kong and Singapore. After increasing steadily during the period from 1980 to 2000, the chain linked EFW rating of the United States fell from 8.65 in 2000 to 8.21 in 2005 and 7.70 in 2010. The chain-linked ranking of the United States has fallen precipitously from second in 2000 to eighth in 2005 and 19th in 2010 (unadjusted ranking of 18th).

The stagnant economy is sure to be on the minds of voters as we get closer to the fall election. President Obama’s campaign is doing everything it can to distract voters from the dismal unemployment rate, depressing budget deficits, and looming tax hikes.

Recently, Veronique de Rugy, an economist at the Mercatus Center, noted the job creation numbers under presidents dating back to 1945. While Obama claims that the economy has created some four million jobs since taking office, the truth is that Americans have seen the worst job creation numbers under the current administration than any of his predecessors dating back to Truman.